Afterword

In Praise of Shadows is an essay on aesthetics by an eminent Japanese novelist; but to sum it up as such is as likely to mislead as to enlighten, for in this case neither novelist nor essay nor aesthetic fits very neatly within the usual boundaries of these terms.

Tanizaki’s literary career spanned more than half a century – he lived from 1886 to 1965 – and was as varied as it was long. Even the slender sampling of his novels available in English suggests something of the range of his imagination. Some Prefer Nettles (Tade kuu mushi, 1928–29) analyzes the conflicting emotions of a wealthy businessman as his unfaithful wife attempts to extricate herself from their marriage. The Makioka Sisters (Sasameyuki, 1943–48) is a minutely detailed portrait of four daughters of an old Osaka mercantile family, centering upon their attempt to find an acceptable husband for the beautiful but painfully reticent second sister, Yukiko. The Key (Kagi, 1956) portrays the sexual fantasies of an aging university professor who ultimately dies of the exquisite thrill of seducing his wife into an affair with a young lover. Diary of a Mad Old Man (Fūten rōjin nikki, 1961–62) is just that, the man’s madness being a geriatric’s consuming urge to satisfy his renewed sexual appetites before death overtakes him.

But the facet of Tanizaki’s talent to which In Praise of Shadows belongs – his deep, even scholarly, interest in the traditional culture of Japan – may not be so readily apparent to the reader of the English translations. The scenes set in the puppet theatre in Some Prefer Nettles and the overtones of courtly sensibility that pervade The Makioka Sisters hint at this fascination; but its most direct manifestation was a body of historical fiction, only a small part of which has been translated. We have in English but two chapters of The Mother of Captain Shigemoto (Shōshō Shigemoto no haha, 1949–50), an eerie novel set in the ninth century, and a meager assortment of novellas and short stories, three of which are conveniently accessible in Howard Hibbett’s Seven Japanese Tales – a mere fraction of the whole. And in addition to the historical fiction, Tanizaki spent a vast amount of time translating The Tale of Genji (Genji monogatari, ca. 1010) into modern Japanese; his rendition is as impressive for its historical and philological erudition as for the beauty of its language.

In Praise of Shadows, then, is the work of an extraordinarily learned novelist, and not simply a charming example of that flourishing genre, the literary man’s essay on a nonliterary subject. The point is worth noting, for successful novelists in Japan are inundated with requests to hold forth on subjects that are often far removed from their knowledge; and their witty but airy ramblings on the latest political scandal, the housing problem, impressionist painting, or whatever, abound in the best newspapers and magazines. Tanizaki himself must have contributed several such pieces, as we surmise from his reference to being interviewed on the subject of unusual foods. But when he writes of traditional aesthetics, he speaks with authority of matters he cared about intensely. In Praise of Shadows is anything but the ‘empty dreams of a novelist’.

‘A well-stocked mind, perhaps,’ a critical reader might answer, ‘but a vagrant mind.’ And there is no denying that Tanizaki does wander – from architecture totoilets to jade to women to food – often with only the most tenuous of transitions, and quite as often turning back to repeat himself. To the Western reader trained to expect symmetry and logical progression in an essay, the urge to edit Tanizaki is at times almost irresistible. He has a perverse habit of shifting without warning from a tone of high seriousness to something near facetiousness; as when he recommends the toilet as a major source of poetic inspiration. His descriptions of lacquerware under candlelight and women in the darkness of the house of pleasure are perfect jewels; but would they not stand out to better advantage removed from the company of that murmuring bowl of soup and Einstein’s trip to Kyoto? Yet to do so would drain the life of In Praise of Shadows, for Tanizaki’s ‘essay’ works in ways different from the Western essay, and demands the freedom of his seemingly haphazard style.

One of the oldest and most deeply ingrained of Japanese attitudes to literary style holds that too obvious a structure is contrivance, that too orderly an exposition falsifies the ruminations of the heart, that the truest representation of the searching mind is just to ‘follow the brush’. Indeed it would not be far wrong to say that the narrative technique we call ‘stream of consciousness’ has an ancient history in Japanese letters. It is not that Japanese writers have been ignorant of the powers of concision and articulation. Rather they have felt that certain subjects – the vicissitudes of the emotions, the fleeting perceptions of the mind – are best couched in a style that conveys something of the uncertainty of the mental process and not just its neatly packaged conclusions.

Thus it was that the compilers of the great classical anthologies, perhaps the most painstakingly structured compilations in the history of any literature, deliberately muted the sense of seasonal progression by frequent backtracking, and insisted upon a background of quite ordinary poems to set off the truly stellar compositions. And thus it is that Tanizaki’s subject requires the shadowy style in which he treats it. Questions of the sort he raises have no final answers, and the mind of the writer who takes them up must always be groping, his statements always tentative. Susan Sontag has put the matter well in explaining her choice of style in ‘Notes on Camp’: ‘To snare a sensibility in words, especially one that is alive and powerful, one must be tentative and nimble. The form of jottings, rather than an essay (with its claim to a linear, consecutive argument), seemed more appropriate for getting down something of this particular fugitive sensibility.’ Tanizaki would surely claim the same for the aesthetic he attempts to delineate.

Tanizaki’s aesthetic speaks for itself and needs no explication, but it should be pointed out that his is not in every way an orthodox view of Japanese taste. For one thing, he conspicuously refrains from claims of some mysterious aesthetic sensibility in the Japanese genes. (We could forgive him if he did; the notion is centuries old and has the endorsement of the most eminent artists and scholars.) That the Japanese sensibility is in some ways unique is to be sure one of his main points, but he traces the uniqueness to more basic – and more believable – sources than ‘national character’. Architecture developed as it did because of climatic conditions and the nature of available building materials. Gold served as a reflector of light as well as an ornament. ‘The quality that we call beauty … must always grow from the realities of life.’ And to Tanizaki this meant the whole of life, the base as well as the noble, eating and defecating as well as playgoing and the contemplation of calligraphy. Here lies another reason for following uncritically the erratic course of this essay. His descents to the earthy plane of toilets and recipes are as vital to his aesthetic as his ascents to the ethereal realm of ancient temples and the Nō. Few will follow him quite so uncritically as to agree that the traditional conception of female beauty was the inevitable result of having yellow skin; but we must admit that his insistence upon basic and natural causes contributes much to the eloquence of his argument.

The consequence of such an argument is an essentially pessimistic aesthetic, the aesthetic not of a celebrant but of a mourner. Tanizaki holds no hope for the survival of a sensibility that grew from a way of life now passing out of existence. By 1933, when In Praise of Shadows was written, much of what he described had either perished or was preserved, fossil-like, in surroundings that betrayed its true beauty. Traditional building materials and appliances were being replaced by glittering Western inventions. Gold-flecked lacquerware had been rendered garish by electric light. Floodlamps had turned the Kabuki into a ‘world of sham’. Had he written later in his career he might well have added the Nō theatre and perhaps the Japanese house to his list of the moribund.

Here again Tanizaki runs counter to orthodoxy. His pessimism (and probably his earthiness too) would not be at all popular with the modern artistic establishment: the ‘masters’ of flower arrangement, tea ceremony, calligraphy, painting, dance. Many of these people make handsome livings by their art, and, as the government’s chosen cultural emissaries, have been influential shapers of the image of Japanese culture that is packaged for export. The implication that their art is stillborn could not but be resented. Tanizaki, however, would dismiss it as cold and sterile, too far removed from the sources of its life to claim any vitality. That scattered vestiges of excellence still survive he would not deny; and anyone who has seen for instance a votive performance of Nō on the weathered outdoor stage of a temple or shrine must agree that they do survive. But for Tanizaki a museum piece is no cause for rejoicing. An art must live as a part of our daily lives or we had better give it up. We can admire it for what it once was, and try to understand what made it so – as Tanizaki does in In Praise of Shadows – but to pretend that we can still participate in it is mere posturing.

Mrs Tanizaki tells a story of when her late husband decided, as he frequently did, to build a new house. The architect arrived and announced with pride, ‘I’ve read your In Praise of Shadows, Mr Tanizaki, and know exactly what you want.’ To which Tanizaki replied, ‘But no, I could never live in a house like that.’ There is perhaps as much resignation as humor in his answer.

In Praise of Shadows (In’ei raisan) was first published in the December 1933 and January 1934 issues of Keizai ōrai. In 1954 Edward G. Seidensticker published a selection of translated excerpts interspersed with commentary in Volume I, Number 1, of the Japan Quarterly. This article was later reprinted in the January 1955 issue of the Atlantic Monthly. The present volume is a complete translation of In Praise of Shadows which combines Professor Seidensticker’s excerpts with my own rendition of the remainder of the essay.

THOMAS J. HARPER